In the effort to maintain the glow of victory, a number of Vietnamese students who have won school beauty pageants have also felt the weight of the crowns they are wearing.
Many have said that sleepless nights became common after the pressure caused by their victory.
“I kept crying myself to sleep during the two nights after I won, because of the pressure weighing down on me,” said Hoang Thi Hao who won the Ho Chi Minh City University of Finance-Marketing’s beauty pageant in 2016.
Backbiting to face
At the time, she was not ready to be the whole school’s beauty representative, Hao explained.
“Of course the title brought me a lot of positive things like being known, opportunities to join meaningful activities, but it also drew too much attention to me,” she said.
Moreover, after the contest, Hao said that she always had to maintain the image of a beauty queen with more effort put into the way she dressed and talked, both in real life and on social media.
“Before posting anything to Facebook, I always considered it a lot and most of the time I just stopped posting,” Hao remembered.
In addition, while the beauty win did not change her, she said that some of her friends did build some distance between them.
Elsewhere, Khanh Ly was in the top five of a beauty pageant at the Ho Chi Minh City Campus of the Hanoi-based Foreign Trade University in 2014.
She was the contestant who received the most online votes in the competition.
“But people talked behind my back as they doubted the result,” Ly recalled. “It’s easy to understand as each contestant had people who loved and wanted them to win.”
Another subject of backbiting after suddenly becoming well known is Vo E Vo from the Hue Academy of Music, who won a contest to play in a commercial with local pop star Son Tung M-TP.
Appearing in the commercial with the singer brought her fame, but also trouble from the Internet.
She received hundreds of friend requests and private messages as well as negative comments every day.
“The number of messages was too many and I couldn’t reply to all of them, so many people started to say bad things about me, calling me unfriendly or sending me disturbing messages,” she said.
The cyber pressure pushed the young girl to hide herself in her room and cry.
From backbiting to attacking
Upsetting others by bad-mouthing them seems not to be some people’s only goal however, with several even making plans to attack those they hated.
N.H., a former student from a school named M. in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 3, said that after winning a beauty pageant at the school, she was invited by teenage magazines for photo shoots and got to know many good-looking boys.
“I had a love interest with a boy and he also confirmed that he was single, but after that became known I received a lot of anonymous, threatening messages,” H. said. “They also smeared me on social networks, calling me a boyfriend stealer and of course the rumor spread very fast.”
“The peak of the hate came when I fell off my bike after being hit by 4 people after an extra class,” she said.
Living in fear, not to mention an excessive amount of time taking care of her looks, meant H. became distracted from her studies before entering the 12th grade.
Expert advice
Tran Thi Thu Phuong, a contestant in a pageant at the Ho Chi Minh City Campus of the Foreign Trade University this year, said that some contests do not even have a specific message, and only aim to crown those with good looks.
She expressed her fear that this will make students, even in secondary school, understand that the prettier they are, the higher class they will achieve.
Spending more time on their looks than studying is often another result, Phuong added.
According to Bui Hong Quan, a psychologist from the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Labor, War Invalids and Society, pageants do have positive value.
However, organizers should make students understand that it is a playground for contestants to perfect themselves, and celebrating how beautiful they are is not the contest’s priority.
Moreover, contestants need to be equipped with the skills to live in the community and deal with problems as they occur.
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